swallow a falling star
by radialarch
Summary: Sherlock bargained away his heart a long time ago. It may have been a mistake. / S/J, pining. Slight fusion with "Howl's Moving Castle." One-shot.


**Title**: swallow a falling star  
**Spoilers**: series 1 and 2  
**Pairing**: Sherlock/John  
**Rating**: K+  
**Warnings**: none  
**Wordcount**: 1.5k  
**Summary**: Sherlock bargained away his heart a long time ago. It may have been a mistake. (Slight fusion with _Howl's Moving Castle_.)

**A/N**: Written for the 2013 summer Holmestice exchange, for theotherwillow. Much thanks to teahigh, peevee, and overnightbivouac for beta insights.

* * *

Sherlock bargained away his heart a long time ago. He remembers the spark bright enough to make him wince, fluttering in his palm, and a small voice promising that he could know the world. The light slipped down his throat smooth and pleasantly warm, and then it was as if something had muffled his heart, was wrapping around it relentlessly—

He felt his heart stop, felt something in the hollow of his chest tickle weakly, and coughed.

"I'm alive!" the star had laughed. "Oh, that's brilliant. Call me Calcifer. And you are?"

"Sherlock," he said fearlessly, and he'd never looked back.

—

Most people leave their hearts exposed, let their emotions bleed into the tilt of head and curve of voice. Sherlock has his cradled in the cranial cavity of a skull, displayed on the fireplace mantle.

He thinks his method is safer.

—

"You know," John Watson says around a mouthful of post-case dumpling, "I think they're wrong about you."

"Who?" Sherlock frowns.

"I mean, people keep warning me off you, don't they? Sergeant Donovan even called you heartless."

Sherlock, in the middle of picking out the cashews from his chicken, can't help a smirk at that. "Surprisingly perceptive of her," he says mildly.

"No, but look," John says, waving a fork at him. "Judging by tonight you would have killed yourself long before you can kill anyone else."

Sherlock thinks about his heart set away in Baker Street and says, "I wasn't in any danger."

"You are so full of it," John says, but his tone is tolerant, and they end up grinning at each other across the table.

—

"So you're keeping him?" Calcifer asks after John's gone to bed and Sherlock's nicked him back from Mrs Hudson.

"I'm not — doing anything," Sherlock says, tugging at his dressing gown. "But he's staying, yes."

"Good," Calcifer says. "Now you can take _him _chasing after criminals — do you know how fragile I am? One wrong step off a building and I could shatter! And then where would you be? You need me, you know; you talk to me, I offer valuable insights, it's a great system."

"I've never dropped you," Sherlock says indignantly, "and they're not your cases, they're—"

"And anyway, I like him," Calcifer continues, unperturbed.

"You like anyone who doesn't shudder at the sight of you," Sherlock snaps, but afterwards as he stares at the ceiling above his pillow he's still thinking about it: the way Calcifer had said so effortlessly, _I like him_, and John with his hands he'd killed with, tucked casually into his pockets.

There's a point behind Sherlock's sternum that feels oddly numb. It doesn't go away for hours.

—

The air smells of smoke and there's ash dusting John's hair. "Don't move," he says, one hand gripping Sherlock's upper arm and the other warm on the back of his neck.

"I'm fine," Sherlock says irritably, ducking forward and setting off another grey flurry dancing in the air. "Where's Lestrade?"

"On his way, probably," John shrugs. "And cursing idiot detectives who _wander into burning buildings_ on a whim. But really, hold still, I need to make sure you haven't got a concussion."

"You would have preferred that the documents go up in flames, I suppose," Sherlock scowls. "And I'm not concussed," he adds with a wince as John tugs at his hair.

John only makes a disbelieving noise as he continues to run his fingers over his scalp. "Right, no obvious trauma," he mutters. "How's your vision? Hearing?"

"_Fine_." Sherlock wiggles his way out of John's grasp and stands up. "Ah, there's Lestrade now."

"Who's the prime minister?"

Sherlock blinks wordlessly at John.

"Right, you wouldn't know that," John sighs, and dusts off Sherlock's lapels. "Go on then, you great prat."

Lestrade launches into a tirade about _procedures_ and _liability_ and _are you even listening to me, Sherlock?_, but Sherlock's thinking about John's hands steady against his head, the press of his fingers into the fabric of his coat.

—

James Moriarty leaves Sherlock bleeding hearts as presents all over London, and it's brilliant, it's thrilling; there's raw beauty in the exposed tangle of wires of a bomb.

"People are dying," John says, urgent, eyebrows drawn together. "Don't you care at all?"

"Will caring about them help save them?" he asks, and sees John's face go very pale.

"Okay," John says, "right," and his voice is as tight as the line of his shoulders, his eyes blinking in betrayal.

The accusation sits heavily inside Sherlock's ribcage, in the space his heart should be.

—

"He frightened you," says Calcifer, after the night at the pool, the smell of chlorine still clinging to everything.

"He threatened me," Sherlock corrects sharply. "He seems unaware that someone already _has_ burnt the heart out of me."

"It's not the same thing."

Sherlock tucks his violin under his chin and refuses to answer.

"You need to tell John," Calcifer says in between discordant notes.

"What, tell him that his flatmate is _literally_ heartless?" Sherlock grips the bow tighter and the next measure comes out in a smeared screech. "Don't be ridiculous."

—

Sherlock wakes up in his own bed with a sheet tucked around him.

"John?" he says without thinking, struggling to untangle himself, and it comes back slowly: Irene Adler, the phone, the syringe in his arm. "John?" he says again, trips out of bed.

"You okay?" And there's John outlined in light, picking him up with hands steady on his shoulders. "C'mon, back to bed. I'll be next door if you need me."

"Why would I need you?" Sherlock says, and he means _I can't, I won't, I would destroy you._ A man without a heart is a dangerous being, after all.

"No reason at all," John says easily (_too easily_), then he's gone.

_Stay_, Sherlock thinks and doesn't say, as door closes with a soft click.

—

Sherlock paces in a room in Devon.

Sherlock paces in an empty room, because John had left — because Sherlock had spit out, "I don't have _friends_", and the lines of John's face had hardened before he got up and walked away, every motion stiff and foreign.

He types out texts to John half a dozen times and doesn't send a single one of them. He's never been one for apologies and now he doesn't know how to begin.

He ends up down in the pub with a strong drink in front of him when Louise Mortimer walks in. She's attractive and a doctor, just John's type; Sherlock pulls out his phone and snaps a picture, sends it along and hopes John will know what he means.

When John says yes Sherlock climbs back up to his room, looks out at the moor and feels achingly lonely.

—

Sherlock stands on the roof of Barts while Moriarty bleeds out behind him.

"What's going on?" John, shaky and small through the mobile. "Sherlock?"

"John," he says, and thinks _it won't hurt, John, I've died before; Mycroft will take care of Calcifer and it'll be all right_; and he'd planned out the physics of it all but he hadn't imagined John's voice, breathless, and the way it'd make him shiver harder than the wind slicing underneath his scarf.

"No," John says, clipped, "_don't_—"

Sherlock says, "Good-bye, John."

—

"Just for me, Sherlock, don't—be dead," John says, and Sherlock feels something spark in his chest, like the last of a fire still steadily glowing among the ashes.

It stays with him for three years while he's away from London soil.

—

When Sherlock returns to 221B battle-scarred and weary, he expects the flat to be empty. Instead, he finds John Watson in the kitchen making two cups of tea.

"Hello, Sherlock," John says, and offers him the sugar bowl.

Sherlock mutely spills a spoonful into a cup and only afterwards notices the skull perched on the table.

"You—you kept him," Sherlock says, wondering.

"I. Well." John looks into his own drink. "It's your heart, isn't it? I couldn't—well, I couldn't let Mycroft have him."

"Calcifer...talked to you," Sherlock says slowly. "He wasn't supposed to."

"Only a bit," John admits. "And I started talking to him first." He puts his cup down and rounds the table to stand next to Sherlock's chair. Sherlock can feel the heat of John's body all the way down his side.

"May I?" John asks, nodding at Sherlock's chest. When Sherlock throws his shoulders back and tips back his head, he places a hand carefully against Sherlock's ribs. "That—that's really remarkable," he says very quietly. "Did it hurt?"

"No," Sherlock says, as the warmth of John's hand seeps through his shirt, pools into his chest until he feels like he can't breathe—

Then there's the sound of his pulse thudding through his ears, and an uncomfortable weight he can't swallow down.

"What—" Sherlock coughs, and has to close his eyes against a sudden light.

"Haha!" He hears Calcifer crow. "I haven't felt like this in ages!"

"I thought you might like to have it back," John says.

"I—yes," and Sherlock smiles, slow. "Thank you."

When he looks up John's eyes are very bright, and he yields easily when Sherlock pulls his head down, to press John's mouth against his own. Underneath John's hand, Sherlock's heart flutters fast, bird-like.

* * *

_This is not the fic I intended to write, at all; I hope I've managed to capture some of the magic of _Howl's Moving Castle _anyway. _


End file.
